Welcome to How To Cook That I'm Ann Reardon and this week we're making the
famous Mont Blanc dessert which means white mountain. The Mont Blanc peak that the
desert is named after is on the border between Italy and France. According to
the French this dessert was invented by Anton Rumplemayer at Angelina's
restaurant in Paris. But the Italians claim that they invented the dessert 300
years earlier! This desert has meringue and cream inside in a coating of
chestnut cream over the top. We actually didn't see the dessert in Italy at all
so I decided to look for it on the French island of Corsica ... apparently back
in the 16th century in Corsica if you were a landowner you had to plant four
trees every year. They must have had big land if they're going to plant forgeries
every year and one of them had to be a chestnut tree and chestnuts have become
quite an important part of the economy here. It's not quite chestnut season here
yet but we still found chestnut eclairs. The French word for chestnut here is
chataigne ... I think that's how you say it if I pronounced it wrong and you
speak French let me know in the comments how to actually pronounce it. These were
amazing that this really beautiful chestnut cream in the middle. There was
chestnut flour and one menu even had chestnut creme brulee. Chestnut cake
was at cafes literally everywhere and chestnut products were at the
supermarket but there was no mont blanc! After we got off the cruise we actually
flew to Paris and we went to lots of patisserie -- one of which was
Angelina's which is where it was apparently invented and there finally we
found the mont blanc dessert. I was expecting the chestnut topping on the
outside to be like the filling in the Eclair that I had
but it was much thicker and drier and sweeter and it was quite cloying. Recipes
for this top part do vary widely from ones that just basically are chestnuts and
sugar all the way through to ones that have other ingredients that lighten it
up so I'm going to go for one that's a little lighter but I'll put the thicker
more sort of cloying one on the website as well so you can choose which one you
want to make. But let's start with our meringues put some egg whites and sugar
and a pinch of cream of tartar into a bowl and whip that on high speed. If
you're new around here all the recipe quantities are on the howtocookthat.net
website for you in grams and ounces and cups and I'll link to that below for you.
and make sure you subscribe to how to cook that and hit the bell to turn on
notifications so you know when I upload a new video ... and you need to keep
whipping that until your meringue is nice and thick like this. Draw circles
onto some baking paper and then once you've done that you want to flip it
over so that you don't get any of that pencil on your meringue it's just to
give you a guide as to how big to pipe them. Pipe domes of meringue to fill each
circle and then put some water on your fingertip and push down that top little
bit on each one so you don't have it sticking up there. Then place those in
the oven to bake ... once they're done you want to leave them in the oven but turn
off the heat so that they can cool down slowly this helps stop any cracks. For
the orange syrup you need to combine sugar fresh orange juice and some orange
rind. Then you just stir that together and then microwave it on high until the
sugar is dissolved and then you just want to set that aside to cool ... easy. To
make the cake base you'll need flour sugar butter baking powder and eggs
place the eggs and sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer and beat them on
high speed until they've gone from being a deep yellow to a pale and fluffy
mixture. Melt the butter add the flour and the baking powder in
to a sieve and sift that just to get rid of any lumps and to aerate it then pour
in the melted butter and fold that all together. Pour it into a small brownie
tin and bake it until it's golden. For the chestnut topping we need butter
cream sugar egg yolk rum and of course chestnut puree. I wouldn't have been able
to get fresh chestnuts back through Australian customs so I just had to get
a tin that's the best that I could do. put the sugar into a bowl add the egg
yolk and mix those together then add enough of the cream to make a paste. Put
the rest of the cream into a pan and wait until it just comes to the boil and
then pour it into the yolk mixture and whisk it together then add all of that
back into the pan and heat it up again and you're doing this so you can cook
the egg yolks and dissolve that sugar and you just want to keep stirring until
it just starts to thicken and you can start to see the bottom of the pan there.
then you want to let that cool to room temperature ... you can speed that up by
putting the bottom of the pan in a sink of cold water. Once it is cool tip it
into the bowl of an electric mixer and then add in the rum and the butter and
that tin of chestnut puree and you want to whip that all together until it's
smooth. Next I actually put it through a sieve to get rid of any little bits of
chestnut there are a few little chunks in there and then cover it in plastic
wrap and put it in the fridge to chill. whip your cream and take your cake out
of the tray and cut circles in roughly the same size as you made your meringues
so that they will sit neatly on top of each circle. Now to assemble ... start with a
circle of cake at the bottom and add a couple of teaspoons of that orange syrup
or if you prefer you could just use marmalade if you don't want to make the
syrup but it does make the cake super moist. Add a dollop of cream on top and
then place a meringue on top of that right in the
centre and then cover the whole thing with a thin coating of whipped cream.
Then add some of the chestnut cream around the base ... now the reason I'm doing
this is it's hard to pipe it thick right down to the bottom so if you've got the
chestnut cream underneath at the bottom it makes it look finished and full
instead of looking like there's gaps. pipe the chestnut topping over the top
starting on one side going all the way over to the other just going back and
forth back and forth in one direction. Then turn and pipe in the opposite
direction back and forth so that each side is covered. Now we just need to neaten it
up around the base ... so anywhere where you've got excess on the counter
just use your palette knife just to push it down and scrape it away and then you
want to carefully transfer that onto your plate, making so you don't drop it
and then if you can't get your spatula out just use a knife to gently push it
off. And then sprinkle that with icing sugar so that it looks like a white
mountain ... Mont Blanc! If you prefer the look of your chestnut
going around meringue instead of over the top just put it on a turntable and
put something under your turntable so it's up on an angle and pipe the
chestnut topping on as you spin. So you should be able to keep your piping bag
relatively still and just spin the turntable all the way up to the top.
Beautiful! Head on over to reddit.com/r/h2ct to enter the
baking competition that we have going on you've still got a week and a half to
get baking and get your photos in there for your chance to win some prizes! Help
me out by giving a thumbs up and sharing the video, subscribe to How To Cook That
and check out some more of my vids here. Make it a great week by loving others
and I'll see you on Friday.